
Glass ~JL_i 



\<\6 



O 



Milton 1 

'"HOWARD the close of the year 
1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper 
of the state papers, in the course of his 
researches among the presses of his 
office, met with a large Latin manu- 
script. With it were found corrected 
copies of the foreign despatches written 
by Milton, while he rilled the office of 
Secretary, and several papers relating to 

1 Jonnis Miltoni Angli, de Doctrind Chris- 
tiana libri duo posthumi. A Treatise on Chris- 
tian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures 
alone. By John Milton, translated from the 
Original by Charles R. Sumner, M. A., etc., 
1825. 

1 



jAJ> 



Milton 



the Popish Trials and the Rye-house 
Plot. The whole was wrapped up in 
an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skin- 
ner, Merchant. On examination, the 
large manuscript proved to be the long 
lost Essay on the Doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, which, according to Wood and 
Toland, Milton finished after the Res- 
toration, and deposited with Cyriac 
Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, 
held the same political opinions with 
his illustrious friend. It is therefore 
probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, 
that he may have fallen under the 
suspicions of the government during 
that persecution of the Whigs which 
followed the dissolution of the Oxford 
parliament, and that, in consequence 
of a general seizure of his papers, this 
work may have been brought to the 



Milton 



*-LL 



office in which it has been found. But 
whatever the adventures of the manu- 
script may have been, no doubt can 
exist that it is a genuine relic of the 
great poet. 

Mr. Sumner, who was commanded 
by his Majesty to edit and translate 
the treatise, has acquitted himself of 
his task in a manner honourable to his 
talents and to his character. His ver- 
sion is not indeed very easy or elegant ; 
but it is entitled to the praise of clear- 
ness and fidelity. His notes abound 
with interesting quotations, and have 
the rare merit of really elucidating the 
text. The preface is evidently the 
work of a sensible and candid man, 
firm in his own religious opinions, and 
tolerant toward those of others. 

The book itself will not add much 
3 



m Milton 

to the fame of Milton. It is, like all 
his Latin works, well written, though 
not exactly in the style of the prize 
essays of Oxford and Cambridge. 
There is no elaborate imitation of 
classical antiquity, no scrupulous pu- 
rity, none of the ceremonial cleanness 
which characterises the diction of our 
academical Pharisees. The author does 
not attempt to polish and brighten his 
composition into the Ciceronian gloss 
and brilliancy. He does not in short 
sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic 
refinements. The nature of his sub- 
ject compelled him to use many words 

"That would have made Quintilian stare 
and gasp." 

But he writes with as much ease and 
freedom as if Latin were his mother 

4 



Milton m 



tongue ; and, where he is least happy, 
his failure seems to arise from the care- 
lessness of a native, not from the igno- 
rance of a foreigner. We may apply to 
him what Denham with great felicity 
says of Cowley. He wears the garb, 
but not the clothes of the ancients. 

Throughout the volume are discerni- 
ble the traces of a powerful and inde- 
pendent mind, emancipated from the 
influence of authority, and devoted to 
the search of truth. Milton professes 
to form his system from the Bible 
alone ; and his digest of Scriptural 
texts is certainly among the best that 
have appeared. But he is not always 
so happy in his inferences as in his 
citations. 

Some of the heterodox doctrines 
which he avows seemed to have ex- 
5 



*m Milton 



-5^_i 



cited considerable amazement, particu- 
larly his Arianism, and his theory on 
the subject of polygamy. Yet we can 
scarcely conceive that any person could 
have read the " Paradise Lost " without 
suspecting him of the former; nor do 
we think that any reader, acquainted 
with the history of his life, ought to 
be much startled at the latter. The 
opinions which he has expressed re- 
specting the nature of the Deity, the 
eternity of matter, and the observation 
of the Sabbath, might, we think, have 
caused more just surprise. 

But we will not go into the discus- 
sion of these points. The book, were 
it far more orthodox or far more heret- 
ical than it is, would not much edify 
or corrupt the present generation. The 
men of our time are not to be con- 
6 



Milton H£ 

verted or perverted by quartos. A few 
more days, and this essay will follow 
the Defensio Populi, to the dust and 
silence of the upper shelf. The name 
of its author, and the remarkable cir- 
cumstances attending its publication, 
will secure to it a certain degree of 
attention. For a month or two it will 
occupy a few minutes of chat in every 
drawing-room, and a few columns in 
every magazine ; and it will then, to 
borrow the elegant language of the 
play-bills, be withdrawn, to make room 
for the forthcoming novelties. 

We wish, however, to avail our- 
selves of the interest, transient as it 
may be, which this work has excited. 
The dexterous Capuchins never choose 
to preach on the life and miracles of a 
saint till they have awakened the de- 
7 



#1 Milton 

votional feelings of their auditors by 
exhibiting some relic of him, a thread 
of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a 
drop of his blood. On the same prin- 
ciple, we intend to take advantage 
of the late interesting discovery, and, 
while this memorial of a great and 
good man is still in the hands of all, 
to say something of his moral and 
intellectual qualities. Nor, we are 
convinced, will the severest of our 
readers blame us if, on an occasion 
like the present, we turn for a short 
time from the topics of the day, to 
commemorate, in all love and rever- 
ence, the genius and virtues of John 
Milton, the poet, the statesman, the 
philosopher, the glory of English lit- 
erature, the champion and the martyr 
of English liberty. 

8 



T 



Milton m 

It is by his poetry that Milton is 
best known ; and it is of his poetry 
that we wish first to speak. By the 
general suffrage of the civilised world, 
his place has been assigned among the 
greatest masters of the art. His de- 
tractors, however, though outvoted, 
have not been silenced. There are 
many critics, and some of great name, 
who contrive in the same breath to 
extol the poems and to decry the poet. 
The works they acknowledge, consid- 
ered in themselves, may be classed 
among the noblest productions of the 
human mind. But they will not allow 
the author to rank with those great 
men who, born in the infancy of civil- 
isation, supplied, by their own powers, 
the want of instruction, and, though 
destitute of models themselves, be- 



#* Milton 

queathed to posterity models which 
defy imitation. Milton, it is said, in- 
herited what his predecessors created ; 
he lived in an enlightened age ; he 
received a finished education ; and we 
must therefore, if we would form a 
just estimate of his powers, make large 
deductions in consideration of these 
advantages. 

"~ We venture to say, on the contrary, 
paradoxical as the remark may appear, 
that no poet has ever had to struggle 
with more unfavourable circumstances 
than Milton. He doubted, as he has 
himself owned, whether he had not 
been born " an age too late." For 
this notion Johnson has thought fit to 
make him the butt of much clumsy 
ridicule. The poet, we believe, under- 
stood the nature of his art better than 
10 



Milton H£ 

the critic. He knew that his poetical 
genius derived no advantage from the 
civilisation which surrounded him, or 
from the learning which he had ac- 
quired ; and he looked back with some- 
thing like regret to the ruder age of 
simple words and vivid impressions. 

We think that, as civilisation ad- 
vances, poetry almost necessarily de- 
clines. Therefore, though we fervently 
admire those great works of imagina- 
tion which have appeared in dark ages, 
we do not admire them the more be- 
cause they have appeared in dark ages. 
On the contrary, we hold that the most 
wonderful and splendid proof of genius 
is a great poem produced in a civilised 
age. We cannot understand why those 
who believe in that most orthodox arti- 
cle of literary faith, that the earliest 



#* Milton 

poets are generally the best, should 
wonder at the rule as if it were the ex- 
ception. Surely the uniformity of the 
phenomenon indicates a corresponding 
uniformity in the cause. 

The fact is, that common observers 
reason from the progress of the experi- 
mental science to that of the imitative 
arts. The improvement of the former 
is gradual and slow. Ages are spent 
in collecting materials, ages more in 
separating and combining them. Even 
when a system has been formed, there 
is still something to add, to alter, or to 
reject. Every generation enjoys the 
use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by 
antiquity, and transmits that hoard, 
augmented by fresh acquisitions, to 
future ages. In these pursuits, there- 
fore, the first speculators lie under 



Milton H£ 

great disadvantages, and, even when 
they fail, are entitled to praise. Their 
pupils, with far inferior intellectual 
powers, speedily surpass them in actual 
attainments. Every girl who has read 
Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Politi- 
tical Economy could teach Montague 
or Walpole many lessons in finance. 
Any intelligent man may now, by reso- 
lutely applying himself for a few years 
to mathematics, learn more than the 
great Newton knew after half a century 
of study and meditation. 

But it is not thus with music, with 
painting, or with sculpture. Still less 
is it thus with poetry. The progress 
of refinement rarely supplies these arts 
with better objects of imitation. It 
may indeed improve the instruments 
which are necessary to the mechanical 
13 



•SH Milton 

operations of the musician, the sculp- 
tor, and the painter. But language, 
the machine of the poet, is best fitted 
for his purpose in its rudest state. Na- 
tions, like individuals, first perceive, 
and then abstract. They advance 
from particular images to general 
terms. Hence the vocabulary of an 
enlightened society is philosophical, 
that of a half-civilised people is poeti- 
cal. 

This change in the language of men 
is partly the cause and partly the effect 
of a corresponding change in the na- 
ture of their intellectual operations, of 
a change by which science gains and 
poetry loses. Generalisation is neces- 
sary to the advancement of knowledge ; 
but particularly is indispensable to the 
creations of the imagination. In pro- 
14 



Milton £# 

portion as men know more and think 
more, they look less at individuals and 
more at classes. They therefore make 
better theories and worse poems. They 
give us vague phrases instead of images, 
and personified qualities instead of men. 
They may be better able to analyse 
human nature than their predecessors. 
But analysis is not the business of the 
poet. His office is to portray, not to 
dissect. He may believe in a moral 
sense, like Shaftesbury ; he may refer 
all human actions to self-interest, like 
Helvetius ; or he may never think 
about the matter at all. His creed on 
such subjects will no more influence 
his poetry, properly so called, than the 
notions which a painter may have con- 
ceived respecting the lacrymal glands, 
or the circulation of the blood, will 



3H Milton 

affect the tears of his Niobe, or the 
blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare 
had written a book on the motives of 
human actions, it is by no means cer- 
tain that it would have been a good 
one. It is extremely improbable that 
it would have contained half so much 
able reasoning on the subject as is to be 
found in the Fable of the Bees. But 
could Mandeville have created an Iago ? 
Well as he knew how to resolve char- 
acters into their elements, would he 
have been able to combine those ele- 
ments in such a manner as to make 
up a man, a real, living, individual 
man ? 

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or 
can even enjoy poetry, without a cer- 
tain unsoundness of mind, if anything 
which gives so much pleasure ought to 
16 



Milton 



?vT 



be called unsoundness. By poetry we 
mean not all writing in verse, nor even 
all good writing in verse. Our defini- 
tion excludes many metrical composi- 
tions which, on other grounds, deserve 
the highest praise. By poetry we 
mean the art of employing words in 
such a manner as to produce an illu- 
sion on the imagination, the art of 
doing by means of words what the 
painter does by means of colours. 
Thus the greatest of poets has de- 
scribed it, in lines universally admired 
for the vigour and felicity of their 
diction, and still more valuable on 
account of the just notion which they 
convey of the art in which he excelled. 

11 As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's 
pen 

17 



#f Milton 

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy 

nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

These are the fruits of the " fine 
frenzy " which he ascribes to the poet, 
— a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a 
frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to 
poetry ; but it is the truth of madness. 
The reasonings are just ; but the prem- 
ises are false. After the first suppo- 
sitions have been made, everything 
ought to be consistent ; but those first 
suppositions require a degree of credu- 
lity which almost amounts to a partial 
and temporary derangement of the in- 
tellect. Hence of all people children 
are the most imaginative. They aban- 
don themselves without reserve to every 
illusion. Every image which is strongly 
presented to their mental eye produces 
18 



Milton H£ 

on them the effect of reality. No 
man, whatever his sensibility may be, 
is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as 
a little girl is affected by the story of 
poor Red Riding-hood. She knows 
that it is all false, that wolves cannot 
speak, that there are no wolves in 
England. Yet in spite of her knowl- 
edge she believes ; she weeps ; she 
trembles ; she dares not go into a dark 
room lest she should feel the teeth of 
the monster at her throat. Such is the 
despotism of the imagination over un- 
cultivated minds. 

In a rude state of society men are 
children with a greater variety of ideas. 
It is therefore in such a state of society 
that we may expect to find the poetical 
temperament in its highest perfection. 
In an enlightened age there will be 
19 



■SH Milton 

much intelligence, much science, much 
philosophy, abundance of just classi- 
fication and subtle analysis, abundance 
of wit and eloquence, abundance of 
verses, and even of good ones ; but 
little poetry. Men will judge and 
compare ; but they will not create. 
They will talk about the old poets, and 
comment on them, and to a certain 
degree enjoy them. But they will 
scarcely be able to conceive the effect 
which poetry produced on their ruder 
ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the 
plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhap- 
sodists, according to Plato, could scarce 
recite Homer without falling into con- 
vulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels 
the scalping knife while he shouts his 
death-song. The power which the 
ancient bards of Wales and Germany 



Milton Ht 

exercised over their auditors seems to 
modern readers almost miraculous. 
Such feelings are very rare in a civilised 
community, and most rare among those 
who participate most in its improve- 
ments. They linger longest among 
the peasantry. 

Poetry produces an illusion on the 
eye of the mind, as a magic lantern 
produces an illusion on the eye of the 
body. And, as the magic lantern acts 
best in a dark room, poetry effects its 
purpose most completely in a dark age. 
As the light of knowledge breaks in 
upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of 
certainty become more and more defi- 
nite, and the shades of probability more 
and more distinct, the hues and linea- 
ments of the phantoms which the poet 
calls up grow fainter and fainter. We 



±M Milton 



m> 



cannot unite the incompatible advan- 
tages of reality and deception, the clear 
discernment of truth and the exquisite 
enjoyment of fiction. 

He who, in an enlightened and liter- 
ary society, aspires to be a great poet, 
must first become a little child. He 
must take to pieces the whole web of 
his mind. He must unlearn much of 
that knowledge which has perhaps con- 
stituted hitherto his chief title to su- 
periority. His very talents will be a 
hindrance to him. His difficulties will 
be proportioned to his proficiency in 
the pursuits which are fashionable 
among his contemporaries ; and that 
proficiency will in general be propor- 
tioned to the vigour and activity of his 
mind. And it is well if, after all his 
sacrifices and exertions, his works do 



Milton H£ 

not resemble a lisping man or a modern 
ruin. We have seen in our own time 
great talents, intense labour, and long 
meditation, employed in this struggle 
against the spirit of the age, and em- 
ployed, we will not say, absolutely in 
vain, but with dubious success and 
feeble applause. 

If these reasonings be just, no poet 
has ever triumphed over greater diffi- 
culties than Milton. He received a 
learned education ; he was a profound 
and elegant classical scholar; he had 
studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical 
literature ; he was intimately acquainted 
with every language of modern Europe, 
from which either pleasure or informa- 
tion was then to be derived. He was 
perhaps the only great poet of later 
times who has been distinguished by 
23 



#4 Milton 



the excellence of his Latin verse. The 
genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the 
first order ; and his poems in the ancient 
language, though much praised by those 
who have never read them, are wretched 
compositions. Cowley, with all his 
admirable wit and ingenuity, had little 
imagination ; nor indeed do we think 
his classical diction comparable to that 
of Milton. The authority of Johnson 
is against us on this point. But John- 
son had studied the bad writers of the 
middle ages till he had become utterly 
insensible to the Augustan elegance, 
and was as ill qualified to judge between 
two Latin styles as a habitual drunkard 
to set up for a wine-taster. 

Versification in a dead language is 
an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly, 
imitation of that which elsewhere may 
24 



Milton H£ 

be found in healthful and spontaneous 
perfection. The soils on which this 
rarity flourishes are in general as ill- 
suited to the production of vigorous 
native poetry as the flower-pots of 
a hothouse to the growth of oaks. 
That the author of the Paradise Lost 
should have written the Epistle to 
Manso was truly wonderful. Never 
before were such marked originality 
and such exquisite mimicry found to- 
gether. Indeed in all the Latin poems 
of Milton the artificial manner indis- 
pensable to such works is admirably 
preserved, while, at the same time, his 
genius gives to them a peculiar charm, 
an air of nobleness and freedom, which 
distinguishes them from all other writ- 
ings of the same class. They remind 
us of the amusements of those angelic 

25 



#* Milton 

warriors who composed the cohort of 
Gabriel : 

" About him exercised heroic games 

The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er 

their heads 
Celestial armory, shield, helm, and spear, 
Hung high, with diamond flaming and with 

gold." 

We cannot look upon the sportive 
exercises for which the genius of Mil- 
ton ungirds itself without catching a 
glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible 
panoply which it is accustomed to 
wear. The strength of his imagina- 
tion triumphed over every obstacle. 
So intense and ardent was the fire of 
his mind, that it not only was not 
sufFocated beneath the weight of fuel, 
but penetrated the whole superincum- 
26 



Milton H£ 

bent mass with its own heart and 
radiance. 

It is not our intention to attempt 
anything like a complete examination 
of the poetry of Milton. The public 
has long been agreed as to the merit 
of the most remarkable passages, the 
incomparable harmony of the numbers, 
and the excellence of that style, which 
no rival has been able to equal, and no 
parodist to degrade, which displays in 
their highest perfection the idiomistic 
powers of the English tongue, and to 
which every ancient and every modern 
language has contributed something of 
grace, of energy, or of music. In the 
vast field of criticism on which we are 
entering innumerable reapers have al- 
ready put their sickles. Yet the har- 
vest is so abundant that the negligent 
27 



m Milton 

search of a straggling gleaner may be 
rewarded with a sheaf. 

The most striking characteristic of 
the poetry of Milton is the extreme 
remoteness of the associations by 
means of which it acts on the reader. 
Its effect is produced, not so much 
by what it expresses, as by what it 
suggests ; not so much by the ideas 
which it directly conveys, as by 
other ideas which are connected with 
them. He electrifies the mind through 
conductors. The most unimaginative 
man must understand the Iliad. Homer 
gives him no choice, and requires from 
him no exertion, but takes the whole 
upon himself, and sets the images 
in so clear a light, that it is impossi- 
ble to be blind to them. The works 
of Milton cannot be comprehended or 
28 



Milton £# 

enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader 
cooperate with that of the writer. He 
does not paint a finished picture, or 
play for a mere passive listener. He 
sketches, and leaves others to fill up 
the outline. He strikes the key-note, 
and expects his hearer to make out the 
melody. 

We often hear of the magical influ- 
ence of poetry. The expression in 
general means nothing : but, applied 
to the writings of Milton, it is most 
appropriate. His poetry acts like an 
incantation. Its merit lies less in its 
obvious meaning than in its occult 
power. There would seem, at first 
sight, to be no more in his words than 
in other words. But they are words 
of enchantment. No sooner are they 
pronounced, than the past is present 
29 






Milton 



and the distant near. New forms of 
beauty start at once into existence, and 
all the burial-places of the memory 
give up their dead. Change the struc- 
ture of the sentence ; substitute one 
synonyme for another, and the whole 
effect is destroyed. The spell loses 
its power ; and he who should then 
hope to conjure with it would find 
himself as much mistaken as Cassim 
in the Arabian tale, when he stood 
crying, " Open Wheat," " Open Bar- 
ley," to the door which obeyed no 
sound but " Open Sesame." The 
miserable failure of Dry den in his 
attempt to translate into his own 
diction some part of the Paradise 
Lost, is a remarkable instance of 
this. 

In support of these observations, we 
30 



Milton H£ 

may remark that scarcely any passages 
in the poems of Milton are more gen- 
erally known or more frequently re- 
peated than those which are little more 
than muster-rolls of names. They are 
not always more appropriate or more 
melodious than other names. But they 
are charmed names. Every one of them 
is the first link in a long chain of asso- 
ciated ideas. Like the dwelling-place 
of our infancy revisited in manhood, 
like the song of our country heard in a 
strange land, they produce upon us an 
effect wholly independent of their in- 
trinsic value. One transports us back 
to a remote period of history. Another 
places us among the novel scenes and 
manners of a distant region. A third 
evokes all the dear classical recollections 
of childhood, the schoolroom, the dog- 
31 



#4 Milton 



eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. 
A fourth brings before us the splendid 
phantoms of chivalrous romance, the 
trophied lists, the embroidered housings, 
the quaint devices, the haunted forests, 
the enchanted gardens, the achievements 
of enamoured knights, and the smiles 
of rescued princesses. 

In none of the works of Milton 
is his peculiar manner more happily 
displayed than in Allegro and the 
Penseroso. It is impossible to con- 
ceive that the mechanism of language 
can be brought to a more exquisite 
degree of perfection. These poems 
differ from others, as attar of roses dif- 
fers from ordinary rose water, the close 
packed essence from the thin diluted 
mixture. They are, indeed, not so 
much poems, as collections of hints, 
32 



Milton H£ 

from each of which the reader is to 
make out a poem for himself. Every 
epithet is a text for a stanza. 

The Comus and the Samson Ago- 
nistes are works which, though of very 
different merit, offer some marked 
points of resemblance. Both are 
lyric poems in the form of plays. 
There are, perhaps, no two kinds of 
composition so essentially dissimilar as 
the drama and the ode. The business 
of the dramatist is to keep himself out 
of sight, and to let nothing appear but 
his characters. As soon as he attracts 
notice to his personal feelings, the illu- 
sion is broken. The effect is as un- 
pleasant as that which is produced on 
the stage by the voice of a prompter 
or the entrance of a scene-shifter. 
Hence it was, that the tragedies of 
33 



3H Milton 



rr~> 



Byron were his least successful per- 
formances. They resemble those 
pasteboard pictures invented by the 
friend of children, Mr. Newbury, in 
which a single movable head goes 
round twenty different bodies, so that 
the same face looks out upon us suc- 
cessively, from the uniform of a hussar, 
the furs of a judge, and the rags of a 
beggar. In all the characters, patriots 
and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown 
and sneer of Harold were discernible in 
an instant. But this species of egotism, 
though fatal to the drama, is the inspi- 
ration of the ode. It is the part of the 
lyric poet to abandon himself, without 
reserve, to his own emotion. 

Between these hostile elements many 
great men have endeavoured to effect 
an amalgamation, but never with cora- 
34 



Milton 



?^r 



plete success. The Greek Drama, on 
the model of which the Samson was 
written, sprang from the Ode. The 
dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, 
and naturally partook of its character. 
The genius of the greatest of the Athe- 
nian dramatists cooperated with the cir- 
cumstances under which tragedy made 
its first appearance- iEschylus was, 
head and heart, a lyric poet. In his 
time, the Greeks had far more inter- 
course with the East than in the days 
of Homer; and they had not yet acquired 
that immense superiority in war, in sci- 
ence, and in the arts, which, in the fol- 
lowing generation, led them to treat the 
Asiatics with contempt. From the 
narrative of Herodotus it should seem 
that they still looked up, with the dis- 
ciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At this 
35 






Milton 



period, accordingly, it was natural that 
the literature of Greece should be tinc- 
tured with the Oriental style. And that 
style, we think, is discernible in the 
works of Pindar and iEschylus. The 
latter often reminds us of the Hebrew 
writers. The book of Job, indeed, in 
conduct and diction, bears a consider- 
able resemblance to some of his dramas. 
Considered as plays, his works are ab- 
surd ; considered as choruses, they are 
above all praise. If, for instance, we 
examine the address of Clytemnestra 
to Agamemnon on his return, or the 
description of the seven Argive chiefs, 
by the principles of dramatic writing, 
we shall instantly condemn them as 
monstrous. But if we forget the char- 
acters, and think only of the poe- 
try, we shall admit that it has never 
36 



Milton £# 



been surpassed in energy and magnifi- 
cence. Sophocles made the Greek 
drama as dramatic as was consistent 
with its original form. His portraits 
of men have a sort of similarity \ but 
it is the similarity not of a painting, 
but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resem- 
blance j but it does not produce an 
illusion. Euripides attempted to carry 
the reform further. But it was a task 
far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond 
any powers. Instead of correcting what 
was bad, he destroyed what was excel- 
lent. He substituted crutches for stilts, 
bad sermons for good odes. 

Milton, it is well known, admired 
Euripides highly, much more highly 
than, in our opinion, Euripides de- 
served. Indeed the caresses which 
this partiality leads our countryman 
37 



^ Milton 



to bestow on " sad Electra's poet " 
sometimes remind us of the beautiful 
Queen of Fairy-land kissing the long 
ears of Bottom. At all events, there 
can be no doubt that this veneration 
for the Athenian, whether just or not, 
was injurious to the Samson Ago- 
nistes. Had Milton taken iEschylus 
for his model, he would have given 
himself up to the lyric inspiration, and 
poured out profusely all the treasures 
of his mind, without bestowing a 
thought on those dramatic proprieties 
which the nature of the work rendered 
it impossible to preserve. In the at- 
tempt to reconcile things in their own 
nature inconsistent, he has failed, as 
every one else must have failed. We 
cannot identify ourselves with the 
characters, as in a good play. We 
38 



Milton £# 



cannot identify ourselves with the 
poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting 
ingredients, like an acid and an alkali 
mixed, neutralise each other. We are 
by no means insensible to the merits 
of this celebrated piece, to the severe 
dignity of the style, the graceful and 
pathetic solemnity of the opening 
speech, or the wild and barbaric mel- 
ody which gives so striking an effect 
to the choral passages. But we think 
it, we confess, the least successful 
effort of the genius of Milton. 

The Comus is framed on the model 
of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is 
framed on the model of the Greek 
Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest 
performance of the kind which exists 
in any language. It is as far superior 
to the Faithful Shepherdess, as the 
39 



#4 Milton 

Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, 
or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It 
was well for Milton that he had here 
no Euripides to mislead him. He 
understood and loved the literature of 
modern Italy. But he did not feel for 
it the same veneration which he enter- 
tained for the remains of Athenian and 
Roman poetry, consecrated by so many 
lofty and endearing recollections. The 
faults, moreover, of his Italian predeces- 
sors were of a kind to which his mind 
had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop 
to a plain style, sometimes even to a 
bald style ; but false brilliancy was his 
utter aversion. His muse had no 
objection to a russet attire ; but she 
turned with disgust from the finery of 
Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the 
rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. 
40 



Milton m 

Whatever ornaments she wears are of 
massive gold, not only dazzling to the 
sight, but capable of standing the 
severest test of the crucible. 

Milton attended in the Comus to the 
distinction which he afterwards neg- 
lected in the Samson. He made his 
Masque what it ought to be, essentially 
lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. 
He has not attempted a fruitless strug- 
gle against a defect inherent in the 
nature of that species of composition ; 
and he has therefore succeeded, wher- 
ever success was not impossible. The 
speeches must be read as majestic 
soliloquies; and he who so reads them 
will be enraptured with their eloquence, 
their sublimity, and their music. The 
interruptions of the dialogue, however, 
impose a constraint upon the writer, 
41 



## Milton 

and break the illusion of the reader. 
The finest passages are those which 
are lyric in form as well as in spirit. 
" I should much commend," says the 
excellent Sir Henry Wotten in a letter 
to Milton, " the tragical part if the 
lyrical did not ravish me with a certain 
Dorique delicacy in your songs and 
odes, whereunto, I must plainly con- 
fess to you, I have seen yet nothing 
parallel in our language." The criti- 
cism was just. It is when Milton es- 
capes from the shackles of the dialogue, 
when he is discharged from the labour 
of uniting two incongruous styles, when 
he is at liberty to indulge his choral 
raptures without reserve, that he rises 
even above himself. Then, like his 
own good Genius bursting from the 
earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he 
4? 



Milton H£ 

stands forth in celestial freedom and 
beauty ; he seems to cry exultingly, 

" Now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly or I can run," 

to skim the earth, to soar above the 
clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of 
the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy 
smells of nard and cassia, which the 
musky winds of the zephyr scatter 
through the cedared alleys of the 
Hesperides. 

There are several of the minor poems 
of Milton on which we would willingly 
make a few remarks. Still more will- 
ingly would we enter into a detailed 
examination of that admirable poem, 
the Paradise Regained, which, strangely 
enough, is scarcely ever mentioned 
except as an instance of the blind- 
43 



#4 Milton 

ness of the parental affection which 
men of letters bear toward the offspring 
of their intellects. That Milton was 
mistaken in preferring this work, excel- 
lent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we 
readily admit. But we are sure that 
the superiority of the Paradise Lost 
to the Paradise Regained is not more 
decided than the superiority of the 
Paradise Regained to every poem 
which has since made its appearance. 
Our limits, however, prevent us from 
discussing the point at length. We 
hasten on to that extraordinary pro- 
duction which the general suffrage of 
critics has placed in the highest class 
of human compositions. 

The only poem of modern times 
which can be compared with the Para- 
dise Lost is the Divine Comedy. 
44 



Milton Ht 

The subject of Milton, in some points, 
resembled that of Dante ; but he has 
treated it in a widely different manner. 
We cannot, we think, better illustrate 
our opinion respecting our own great 
poet, than by contrasting him with the 
father of Tuscan literature. 

The poetry of Milton differs from 
that of Dante, as the hieroglyphics of 
Egypt differed from the picture-writing 
of Mexico. The images which Dante 
employs speak for themselves ; they 
stand simply for what they are. Those 
of Milton have a signification which is 
often discernible only to the initiated. 
Their value depends less on what they 
directly represent than on what they 
remotely suggest. However strange, 
however grotesque, may be the appear- 
ance which Dante undertakes to de- 
45 



*m Milton 



sa_' 



scribe, he never shrinks from describing 
it. He gives us the shape, the colour, 
the sound, the smell, the taste ; he 
counts the numbers ; he measures the 
size. His similes are the illustrations 
of a traveller. Unlike those of other 
poets, and especially of Milton, they 
are introduced in a plain, businesslike 
manner; not for the sake of any 
beauty in the objects from which they 
are drawn ; not for the sake of any or- 
nament which they may impart to the 
poem ; but simply in order to make 
the meaning of the writer as clear to 
the reader as it is to himself. The 
ruins of the precipice which led from 
the sixth to the seventh circle of hell 
were like those of the rock which fell 
into the Adige on the south of Trent. 
The cataract of Phlegethon was like 
46 



Milton j# 

that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery 
of St. Benedict. The place where the 
heretics were confined in burning tombs 
resembled the vast cemetery of Aries. 

Now let us compare with the exact 
details of Dante the dim intimations 
of Milton. We will cite a few ex- 
amples. The English poet has never 
thought of taking the measure of Satan. 
He gives us merely a vague idea of 
vast bulk. In one passage the fiend 
lies stretched out huge in length, float- 
ing many a rood, equal in size to the 
earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the 
sea-monster which the mariner mis- 
takes for an island. When he ad- 
dresses himself to battle against the 
guardian angels, he stands like Tener- 
ifFe or Atlas : his stature reaches the 
sky. Contrast with these descriptions 
47 



#1 Milton 

the lines in which Dante has described 
the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. " His 
face seemed to me as long and as broad 
as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome ; and 
his other limbs were in proportion ; so 
that the bank, which concealed him 
from the waist downwards, neverthe- 
less showed so much of him, that three 
tall Germans would in vain have at- 
tempted to reach to his hair." We are 
sensible that we do no justice to the 
admirable style of the Florentine poet. 
But Mr. Cary's translation is not at 
hand ; and our version, however rude, 
is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. 

Once more, compare the lazar- 
house in the eleventh book of the 
Paradise Lost with the last ward of 
Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids 
the loathsome details, and takes refuge 
48 



Milton H£ 



in indistinct but solemn and tremen- 
dous imagery. Despair hurrying from 
couch to couch to mock the wretches 
with his attendance, Death shaking his 
dart over them, but, in spite of suppli- 
cations, delaying to strike. What says 
Dante ? " There was such a moan 
there as there would be if all the sick 
who, between July and September, are 
in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of 
the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, 
were in one pit together ; and such a 
stench was issuing forth as is wont to 
issue from decayed limbs." 

We will not take upon ourselves the 
invidious office of settling precedency 
between two such writers. Each in 
his own department is incomparable ; 
and each, we may remark, has wisely, 
or fortunately, taken a subject adapted 
49 



•SH Milton 

to exhibit his peculiar talent to the 
greatest advantage. The Divine Com- 
edy is a personal narrative. Dante is 
the eye-witness and ear-witness of that 
which he relates. He is the very man 
who has heard the tormented spirits 
crying out for the second death, who 
has read the dusky characters on the 
portal within which there is no hope, 
who has hidden his face from the ter- 
rors of the Gorgon, who has fled from 
the hooks and the seething pitch of 
Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His 
own hands have grasped the shaggy 
sides of Lucifer. His own feet have 
climbed the mountain of expiation. 
His own brow has been marked by 
the purifying angel. The reader would 
throw aside such a tale in incredulous 
disgust, unless it were told with the 



Milton H£ 

strongest air of veracity, with a sobri- 
ety even in its horrors, with the great- 
est precision and multiplicity in its 
details. The narrative of Milton in 
this respect differs from that of Dante, 
as the adventures of Amadis differ from 
those of Gulliver. The author of 
Amadis would have made his book 
ridiculous if he had introduced those 
minute particulars which give such a 
charm to the work of Swift, the nau- 
tical observations, the affected delicacy 
about names, the official documents 
transcribed at full length, and all the 
unmeaning gossip and scandal of the 
court, springing out of nothing, and 
tending to nothing. We are not 
shocked at being told that a man 
who lived, nobody knows when, saw 
many very strange sights, and we can 
Si 



V3w> 



Milton 



easily abandon ourselves to the illusion 
of the romance. But when Lemuel 
Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rother- 
hithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, 
dying islands, and philosophising horses, 
nothing but such circumstantial touches 
could produce for a single moment a 
deception on the imagination. 

Of all the poets who have intro- 
duced into their works the agency of 
supernatural beings, Milton has suc- 
ceeded best. Here Dante decidedly 
yields to him : and as this is a point 
on which many rash and ill-considered 
judgments have been pronounced, we 
feel inclined to dwell on it a little 
longer. The most fatal error which 
a poet can possibly commit, in the 
management of his machinery, is that 
of attempting to philosophise too much. 
52 



Milton 






Milton has been often censured for as- 
cribing to spirits many functions of 
which spirits must be incapable. But 
these objections, though sanctioned by 
eminent names, originate, we venture 
to say, in profound ignorance of the 
art of poetry. 

What is spirit ? What are our own 
minds, the portion of spirit with which 
we are best acquainted ? We observe 
certain phenomena. We cannot ex- 
plain them into material causes. We 
therefore infer that there exists some- 
thing which is not material. But of 
this something we have no idea. We 
can define it only by negatives. We 
can reason about it only by symbols. 
We use the word : but we have no 
image of the thing ; and the business 
of poetry is with images, and not with 
53 



-SH Milton 



words. The poet uses words indeed ; 
but they are merely the instruments of 
his art, not its objects. They are the 
materials which he is to dispose in 
such a manner as to present a picture 
to the mental eye. And if they are 
not so disposed, they are no more 
entitled to be called poetry than a 
bale of canvas and a box of colours 
to be called a painting. 

Logicians may reason about abstrac- 
tions. But the great mass of men 
must have images. The strong ten- 
dency of the multitude in all ages and 
nations to idolatry can be explained on 
no other principle. The first inhab- 
itants of Greece, there is reason to be- 
lieve, worshipped one invisible Deity. 
But the necessity of having something 
more definite to adore produced, in a 
54 



Milton 






few centuries, the innumerable crowd 
of gods and goddesses. In like man- 
ner the ancient Persians thought it 
impious to exhibit the Creator under 
a human form. Yet even these trans- 
ferred to the Sun the worship which, 
in speculation, they considered due only 
to the Supreme Mind. The history of 
the Jews is the record of a continued 
struggle between pure Theism, sup- 
ported by the most terrible sanctions, 
arid the strangely fascinating desire of 
having some visible and tangible object 
of adoration. Perhaps none of the 
secondary causes which Gibbon has 
assigned for the rapidity with which 
Christianity spread over the world, 
while Judaism scarcely ever acquired 
a proselyte, operated more powerfully 
than this feeling. God, the uncreated, 
55 



#t Milton 

the incomprehensible, the invisible, 
attracted few worshippers. A phi- 
losopher might admire so noble a con- 
ception : but the crowd turned away 
in disgust from words which presented 
no image to their minds. It was be- 
fore Deity embodied in a human form, 
walking among men, partaking of their 
infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, 
weeping over their graves, slumbering 
in the manger, bleeding on the cross, 
that the prejudices of the Synagogue, 
and the doubts of the Academy, and 
the pride of the portico, and the fasces 
of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty 
legions, were humbled in the dust. 
Soon after Christianity had achieved 
its triumph, the principle which had 
assisted it began to corrupt it. It be- 
came a new Paganism. Patron saints 
56 



Milton H£ 

assumed the offices of household gods. 
St. George took the place of Mars. 
St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the 
loss of Castor and Pollux. The Vir- 
gin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to 
Venus and the Muses. The fascina- 
tion of sex and loveliness was again 
joined to that of celestial dignity ; and 
the homage of chivalry was blended 
with that of religion. Reformers have 
often made a stand against these feel- 
ings ; but never with more than appar- 
ent and partial success. The men 
who demolished the images in cathe- 
drals have not always been able to de- 
molish those which were enshrined 
in their minds. It would not be diffi- 
cult to show that in politics the same 
rule holds good. Doctrines, we are 
afraid, must generally be embodied 
57 



#* Milton 

before they can excite a strong pub- 
lic feeling. The multitude is more 
easily interested for the most unmean- 
ing badge, or the most insignificant 
name, than for the most important 
principle. 

From these considerations, we infer 
that no poet, who should affect that 
metaphysical accuracy for the want of 
which Milton has been blamed, would 
escape a disgraceful failure. Still, how- 
ever, there was another extreme, which, 
though far less dangerous, was also to 
be avoided. The imaginations of men 
are in a great measure under the con- 
trol of their opinions. The most ex- 
quisite art of poetical colouring can 
produce no illusion, when it is em- 
ployed to represent that which is at 
once perceived to be incongruous and 
58 



Milton H£ 

absurd. Milton wrote in an age of 
philosophers and theologians. It was 
necessary, therefore, for him to abstain 
from giving such a shock to their 
understandings as might break the 
charm which it was his object to 
throw over their imaginations. This 
is the real explanation of the indis- 
tinctness and inconsistency with which 
he has often been reproached. Doctor 
Johnson acknowledges that it was 
absolutely necessary that the spirit 
should be clothed with material forms. 
" But," says he, " the poet should have 
secured the consistency of his system by 
keeping immateriality out of sight, and 
seducing the reader to drop it from his 
thoughts." This is easily said ; but 
what if Milton could not seduce his 
readers to drop immateriality from 
59 



m Milton 

their thoughts ? What if the con- 
trary opinion had taken so fully pos- 
session of the minds of men as to 
leave no room even for the half be- 
lief which poetry requires ? Such we 
suspect to have been the case. It was 
impossible for the poet to adopt alto- 
gether the material or the immaterial 
system. He therefore took his stand 
on the debatable ground. He left the 
whole in ambiguity. He has, doubt- 
less, by so doing, laid himself open 
to the charge of inconsistency. But, 
though philosophically in the wrong, 
we cannot but believe that he was 
poetically in the right. This task, 
which almost any other writer would 
have found impracticable, was easy to 
him. The peculiar art which he pos- 
sessed of communicating his meaning 
60 



Milton 



j^tg. 



circuitously through a long succession 
of associated ideas, and of intimating 
more than he expressed, enabled him 
to disguise those incongruities which 
he could not avoid. 

Poetry which relates to the beings 
of another world ought to be at once 
mysterious and picturesque. That of 
Milton is so. That of Dante is pic- 
turesque indeed beyond any that was 
ever written. Its effect approaches to 
that produced by the pencil or the 
chisel. But it is picturesque to the 
exclusion of all mystery. This is a 
fault on the right side, a fault insepa- 
rable from the plan of Dante's poem, 
which, as we have already observed, 
rendered the utmost accuracy of de- 
scription necessary. Still it is a fault. 
The supernatural agents excite an in- 
61 



^ Milton 

terest ; but it is not the interest which 
is proper to supernatural agents. We 
feel that we could talk to the ghosts 
and demons without any emotion of 
unearthly awe. We could, like Don 
Juan, ask them to supper, and eat 
heartily in their company. Dante's 
angels are good men with wings. His 
devils are spiteful ugly executioners. 
His dead men are merely living men in 
strange situations. The scene which 
passes between the poet and Farinata is 
justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in the 
burning tomb is exactly what Farinata 
would have been at an auto da fe. 
Nothing can be more touching than 
the first interview of Dante and Bea- 
trice. Yet what is it, but a ' lovely 
woman chiding, with sweet austere 
composure, the lover for whose affec- 
62 



Milton £# 

tion she is grateful, but whose vices 
she reprobates ? The feelings which 
give the passage its charm would suit 
the streets of Florence as well as the 
summit of the Mount of Purgatory. 

The spirits of Milton are unlike those 
of almost all other writers. His fiends, 
in particular, are wonderful creations. 
They are not metaphysical abstractions. 
They are not wicked men. They are 
not ugly beasts. They have no horns, 
no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of 
Tasso and Klopstock. They have just 
enough in common with human nature 
to be intelligible to human beings. 
Their characters are, like their forms, 
marked by a certain dim resemblance 
to those of men, but exaggerated to 
gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mys- 
terious gloom. 

63 



*m Milton 



rr~> 



Perhaps the gods and demons of 
iEschylus may best bear a comparison 
with the angels and devils of Milton. 
The style of the Athenian had, as we 
have remarked, something of the Ori- 
ental character ; and the same peculi- 
arity may be traced in his mythology. 
It has nothing of the amenity and 
elegance which we generally find in 
the superstitions of Greece. All is 
rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The 
legends of iEschylus seem to harmo- 
nise less with the fragrant groves and 
graceful porticoes in which his country- 
men paid their vows to the God of 
Light and Goddess of Desire, than 
with those huge and grotesque laby- 
rinths of eternal granite in which Egypt 
enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in 
which Hindostan still bows down to 
64 



Milton H£ 



her seven-headed idols. His favourite 
gods are those of the elder generation, 
the sons of heaven and earth, compared 
with whom Jupiter himself was a strip- 
ling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, 
and the inexorable Furies. Foremost 
among his creations of this class stands 
Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, 
the friend of man, the sullen and im- 
placable enemy of heaven. Prome- 
theus bears undoubtedly a considerable 
resemblance to the Satan of Milton. 
In both we find the same impatience 
of control, the same ferocity, the same 
unconquerable pride. In both charac- 
ters also are mingled, though in very 
different proportions, some kind and 
generous feelings. Prometheus, how- 
ever, is hardly superhuman enough. He 
talks too much of his chains and his 
65 



4H Milton 



uneasy posture : he is rather too much 
depressed and agitated. His resolution 
seems to depend on the knowledge 
which he possesses that he holds the 
fate of his torturer in his hands, and 
that the hour of his release will surely 
come. But Satan is a creature of an- 
other sphere. The might of his intel- 
lectual nature is victorious over the 
extremity of pain. Amidst agonies 
which cannot be conceived without 
horror, he deliberates, resolves, and 
even exults. Against the sword of Mi- 
chael, against the thunder of Jehovah, 
against the flaming lake, and the marl 
burning with solid fire, against the 
prospect of an eternity of uninter- 
mitted misery, his spirit bears up un- 
broken, resting on its own innate 
energies, requiring no support from 
66 



Milton H£ 



anything external, nor even from hope 
itself. 

To return for a moment to the par- 
allel which we have been attempting to 
draw between Milton and Dante, we 
would add that the poetry of these 
great men has in a considerable degree 
taken its character from their moral 
qualities. They are not egotists. They 
rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on 
their readers. They have nothing in 
common with those modern beggars for 
fame, who extort a pittance from the 
compassion of the inexperienced by 
exposing the nakedness and sores of 
their minds. Yet it would be difficult 
to name two writers whose works 
have been more completely, though 
undesignedly, coloured by their personal 
feelings. 

67 



#4 Milton 

The character of Milton was pecul- 
iarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit j 
that of Dante by intensity of feeling. 
In every line of the Divine Comedy we 
discern the asperity which is produced 
by pride struggling with misery. There 
is perhaps no work in the world so 
deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The 
melancholy of Dante was no fantastic 
caprice. It was not, as far as at this 
distance of time can be judged, the 
effect of external circumstances. It 
was from within. Neither love nor 
glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor 
the hope of heaven could dispel it. It 
turned every consolation and every 
pleasure into its own nature. It re- 
sembled that noxious Sardinian soil of 
which the intense bitterness is said to 
have been perceptible even in its honey. 
• 68 



Milton H£ 

His mind was, in the noble language 
of the Hebrew poet, " a land of dark- 
ness, as darkness itself, and where the 
light was as darkness." The gloom 
of his characters discolours all the pas- 
sions of men, and all the face of nature, 
and tinges with its own livid hue the 
flowers of Paradise and the glories of 
the eternal throne. All the portraits 
of him are singularly characteristic. 
No person can look on the features, 
noble even to ruggedness, the dark fur- 
rows of the cheek, the haggard and 
woful stare of the eye, the sullen 
and contemptuous curve of the lip, 
and doubt that they belong to a man 
too proud and too sensitive to be happy. 
Milton was, like Dante, a statesman 
and a lover ; and, like Dante, he had 
been unfortunate in ambition and in 
69 



^ Milton 



love. He had survived his health and 
his sight, the comforts of his home, 
and the prosperity of his party. Of 
the great men by whom he had been 
distinguished at his entrance into life, 
some had been taken away from the 
evil to come ; some had carried into 
foreign climates their unconquerable 
hatred of oppression ; some were pin- 
ing in dungeons ; and some had poured 
forth their blood on scaffolds. Venal 
and licentious scribblers, with just suf- 
ficient talent to clothe the thoughts of 
a pandar in the style of a bellman, 
were now the favourite writers of the 
Sovereign and of the public. It was 
a loathsome herd, which could be com- 
pared to nothing so fitly as to the 
rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, 
half bestial, half human, dropping with 
70 



wine, bloated with gluttony, and reel- 
ing in obscene dances. Amidst these 
that fair Muse was placed, like the 
chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spot- 
less, and serene, to be chattered at, and 
pointed at, and grinned at, by the 
whole rout of Satyrs and Goblins. If 
ever despondency and asperity could be 
excused in any man, they might have 
been excused in Milton. But the 
strength of his mind overcame every 
calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, 
nor age, nor penury, nor domestic 
afflictions, nor political disappoint- 
ments, nor abuse, nor proscription, 
nor neglect, had power to disturb his 
sedate and majestic patience. His 
spirits do not seem to have been high, 
but they were singularly equable. His 
temper was serious, perhaps stern ; but 
7i 



-SH Milton 



it was a temper which no sufferings 
could render sullen or fretful. Such as 
it was when, on the eve of great 
events, he returned from his travels, in 
the prime of health and manly beauty, 
loaded with literary distinctions, and 
glowing with patriotic hopes, such it 
continued to be when, after having 
experienced every calamity which is 
incident to our nature, old, poor, sight- 
less, and disgraced, he retired to his 
hovel to die. 

Hence it was that, though he wrote 
the Paradise Lost at a time of life 
when images of beauty and tenderness 
are in general beginning to fade, even 
from those minds in which they have 
not been effaced by anxiety and dis- 
appointment, he adorned it with all 
that is most lovely and delightful in 
72 



Milton Ht 



the physical and in the moral world, 
Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had 
a finer or a more healthful sense of the 
pleasantness of external objects, or 
loved better to luxuriate amidst sun- 
beams and flowers, the songs of nightin- 
gales, the juice of summer fruits, and 
the coolness of shady fountains. His 
conception of love unites all the voluptu- 
ousness of the Oriental harem, and 
all the gallantry of the chivalric tourna- 
ment, with all the pure and quiet 
affection of an English fireside. His 
poetry reminds us of the miracles of 
Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, 
beautiful as fairy-land, are embosomed 
in its most rugged and gigantic eleva- 
tions. The roses and myrtles bloom 
unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. 
Traces, indeed, of the peculiar char- 
73 



Tt=? 



Milton 



acter of Milton may be found in all 
his works -, but it is most strongly dis- 
played in the Sonnets. Those remark- 
able poems have been undervalued by 
critics who have not understood their 
nature. They have no epigrammatic 
point. There is none of the ingenuity 
of Filicaja in the thought, none of the 
hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch 
in the style. They are simple but 
majestic records of the feelings of the 
poet ; as little tricked out for the public 
eye as his diary would have been. A 
victory, an expected attack upon the 
city, a momentary fit of depression or 
exultation, a jest thrown out against 
one of his books, a dream which for 
a short time restored to him that beauti- 
ful face over which the grave had closed 
for ever, led him to musings, which, 
74 



Milton H£ 



without effort, shaped themselves into 
verse. The unity of sentiment and 
severity of style which characterise 
these little pieces remind us of the 
Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more 
of the Collects of the English Liturgy. 
The noble poem on the Massacres of 
Piedmont is strictly a Collect in verse. 
The Sonnets are more or less strik- 
ing according as the occasions which 
gave birth to them are more or less 
interesting. But they are, almost with- 
out exception, dignified by a sobriety 
and greatness of mind to which we 
know not where to look for a parallel. 
It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to 
draw any decided inferences as to the 
character of a writer from passages 
directly egotistical. But the qualities 
which we have ascribed to Milton, 
75 



#=* Milton 



though perhaps most strongly marked 
in those parts of his works which treat 
of his personal feelings, are distinguish- 
able in every page, and impart to all 
his writings, prose and poetry, English, 
Latin, and Italian, a strong family like- 
ness. 

His public conduct was such as was 
to be expected from a man of a spirit 
so high and of an intellect so powerful. 
He lived at one of the most memorable 
eras in the history of mankind, at the 
very crisis of the great conflict between 
Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and 
despotism, reason and prejudice. That 
great battle was fought for no single 
generation, for no single land. The 
destinies of the human race were staked 
on the same cast with the freedom of 
the English people. Then were first 
76 



Milton H£ 

proclaimed those mighty principles 
which have since worked their way 
into the depths of the American forests, 
which have roused Greece from the 
slavery and degradation of two thousand 
years, and which, from one end of 
Europe to the other, have kindled an 
unquenchable fire in the hearts of the 
oppressed, and loosed the knees of the 
oppressors with an unwonted fear. 

Of those principles, then struggling 
for their infant existence, Milton was 
the most devoted and eloquent literary 
champion. We need not say how 
much we admire his public conduct. 
But we cannot disguise from ourselves 
that a large portion of his countrymen 
still think it unjustifiable. The civil 
war, indeed, has been more discussed, 
and is less understood, than any event 
77 



3H Milton 



*T"> 



in English history. The friends of 
liberty laboured under the disadvantage 
of which the lion in the fable com- 
plained so bitterly. Though they were 
the conquerors, their enemies were the 
painters. As a body the Roundheads 
had done their utmost to decry and ruin 
literature ; and literature was even with 
them, as, in the long run, it always is 
with its enemies. The best book on 
their side of the question is the charm- 
ing narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. 
May's History of the Parliament is 
good ; but it breaks off at the most 
interesting crisis of the struggle. The 
performance of Ludlow is foolish and 
violent ; and most of the later writers 
who have espoused the same cause, 
Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine 
Macaulay, have, to say the least, been 
78 



Milton m 

more distinguished by zeal than either 
by candour or by skill. On the other 
side are the most authoritative and the 
most popular historical works in our 
language, that of Clarendon, and that 
of Hume. The former is not only ably 
written and full of valuable informa- 
tion, but has also an air of dignity and 
sincerity which makes even the preju- 
dices and errors with which it abounds 
respectable. Hume, from whose fasci- 
nating narrative the great mass of the 
reading public are still contented to 
take their opinions, hated religion so 
much that he hated liberty for having 
been allied with religion, and has pleaded 
the cause of tyranny with the dexterity 
of an advocate while affecting the 
impartiality of a judge. 

The public conduct of Milton must 
79 






Milton 



be approved or condemned according 
as the resistance of the people to 
Charles the First shall appear to be 
justifiable or criminal. We shall there- 
fore make no apology for dedicating a 
few pages to the discussion of that 
interesting and most important question. 
We shall not argue it on general grounds. 
We shall not recur to those primary 
principles from which the claim of any 
government to the obedience of its 
subjects is to be deduced. We are 
entitled to that vantage-ground ; but we 
will relinquish it. We are, on this 
point, so confident of superiority, that 
we are not unwilling to imitate the 
ostentatious generosity of those ancient 
knights, who vowed to joust without 
helmet or shield against all enemies, 
and to give their antagonists the advan- 
80 



Milton m 

tage of sun and wind. We will take 
the naked constitutional question. We 
confidently affirm, that every reason 
which can be urged in favour of the 
Revolution of 1688 may be urged 
with at least equal force in favour of 
what is called the Great Rebellion. 

In one respect only, we think, can 
the warmest admirers of Charles venture 
to say that he was a better sovereign 
than his son. He was not, in name 
and profession, a Papist ; we say in 
name and profession, because both 
Charles himself and his creature Laud, 
while they abjured the innocent badges 
of Popery, retained all its worst vices, 
a complete subjection of reason to 
authority, a weak preference of form 
to substance, a childish passion for 
mummeries, an idolatrous veneration 



#* Milton 

for the priestly character, and, above 
all, a merciless intolerance. This, 
however, we waive. We will concede 
that Charles was a good Protestant ; 
but we say that his Protestantism does 
not make the slightest distinction be- 
tween his case and that of James. 

The principles of the Revolution have 
often been grossly misrepresented, and 
never more than in the course of the 
present year. There is a certain class 
of men who, while they profess to 
hold in reverence the great names 
and great actions of former times, 
never look at them for any other pur- 
pose than in order to find in them 
some excuse for existing abuses. In 
every venerable precedent they pass by 
what is essential, and take only what 
is accidental : they keep out of sight 
82 



Milton Ht 



what is beneficial, and hold up to public 
imitation all that is defective. If, in 
any part of any great example, there 
be anything unsound, these flesh-flies 
detect it with an unerring instinct, and 
dart upon it with a ravenous delight. 
If some good end has been attained 
in spite of them, they feel, with their 
prototype, that 

" Their labour must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil." 

To the blessings which England has 
derived from the Revolution these 
people are utterly insensible. The 
expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn rec- 
ognition of popular rights, liberty, 
security, toleration, all go for nothing 
with them. One sect there was, which, 
from unfortunate temporary causes, 
83 



-SH Milton 

it was thought necessary to keep under 
close restraint. One part of the empire 
there was so unhappily circumstanced, 
that at that time its misery was neces- 
sary to our happiness, and its slavery 
to our freedom. These are the parts 
of the Revolution which the politicians 
of whom we speak love to contemplate, 
and which seem to them not indeed 
to vindicate, but in some degree to 
palliate, the good which it has produced. 
Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, 
or of South America. They stand 
forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine 
Right which has now come back to us, 
like a thief from transportation, under 
the alias of Legitimacy. But mention 
the miseries of Ireland. Then William 
is a hero. Then Somers and Shrews- 
bury are great men. Then the Revo- 
84 



Milton H£ 



lution is a glorious era. The very same 
persons who, in this country, never 
omit an opportunity of reviving every 
wretched Jacobite slander respecting 
the Whigs of that period, have no 
sooner crossed St. George's Channel 
than they begin to fill their bumpers 
to the glorious and immortal memory. 
They may truly boast that they look 
not at men, but at measures. So that 
evil be done, they care not who does it ; 
the arbitrary Charles, or the liberal 
William, Ferdinand the Catholic, or 
Frederic the Protestant. On such 
occasions their deadliest opponents may 
reckon upon their candid construction. 
The bold assertions of these people 
have of late impressed a large portion 
of the public with an opinion that 
James the Second was expelled simply 
85 



#* Milton 

because he was a Catholic, and that 
the Revolution was essentially a Protes- 
tant Revolution. 

But this certainly was not the case ; 
nor can any person who has acquired 
more knowledge of the history of those 
times than is to be found in Gold- 
smith's Abridgment believe that, if 
James had held his own religious opin- 
ions without wishing to make proselytes, 
or if, wishing even to make proselytes, 
he had contented himself with exerting 
only his constitutional influence for that 
purpose, the Prince of Orange would 
ever have been invited over. Our 
ancestors, we suppose, knew their own 
meaning ; and, if we may believe them, 
their hostility was primarily not to 
popery, but to tyranny. They did not 
drive out a tyrant because he was a 
86 



Milton 



;^r 



Catholic \ but they excluded Catholics 
from the crown, because they thought 
them likely to be tyrants. The ground 
on which they, in their famous resolu- 
tion, declared the throne vacant, was 
this, " that James had broken the 
fundamental laws of the kingdom." 
Every man, therefore, who approves 
of the Revolution of 1688 must hold 
that the breach of fundamental laws on 
the part of the sovereign justifies resist- 
ance. The question, then, is this : 
Had Charles the First broken the 
fundamental laws of England ? 

No person can answer in the nega- 
tive, unless he refuses credit, not merely 
to all the accusations brought against 
Charles by his opponents, but to the 
narratives of the warmest Royalists, 
and to the confessions of the king 
• 87 



#1 Milton 

himself. If there be any truth in any 
historian of any party who has related 
the events of that reign, the conduct of 
Charles, from his accession to the meet- 
ing of the Long Parliament, had been 
a continued course of oppression and 
treachery. Let those who applaud the 
Revolution, and condemn the Rebellion 
mention one act of James the Second 
to which a parallel is not to be found 
in the history of his father. Let them 
lay their fingers on a single article in 
the Declaration of Right, presented 
by the two Houses to William and 
Mary, which Charles is not acknowl- 
edged to have violated. He had, ac- 
cording to the testimony of his own 
friends, usurped the functions of the 
legislature, raised taxes without the 
consent of Parliament, and quartered 
88 



Milton H£ 

troops on the people in the most illegal 
and vexatious manner. Not a single 
session of Parliament had passed with- 
out some unconstitutional attack on 
the freedom of debate ; the right of 
petition was grossly violated ; arbitrary 
judgments, exorbitant fines, and un- 
warranted imprisonments were griev- 
ances of daily occurrence. If these 
things do not justify resistance, the 
Revolution was treat on ; if they do, 
the Great Rebellion ras laudable. 

But, it is said, why lot adopt milder 
measures ? Why, ait r the king had 
consented to so many reforms, and 
renounced so many oppressive preroga- 
tives, did the Parliament continue to 
rise in their demands at the risk of 
provoking a civil war ? The ship- 
money had been given up. The Star 
89 



#* Milton 

Chamber had been abolished. Provi- 
sion had been made for the frequent 
convocation and secure deliberation 
of Parliaments. Why not pursue an 
end confessedly good by peaceable and 
regular means ? We recur again to 
the analogy of the Revolution. Why 
was James driven from the throne ? 
Why was he not retained upon condi- 
tions ? He too had offered to call 
a free Parliament, and to submit to its 
decision all the matters in dispute. Yet 
we are in the habit of praising our 
forefathers, who preferred a revolu- 
tion, a disputed succession, a dynasty 
of strangers, twenty years of foreign 
and intestine war, a standing army, and 
a national debt, to the rule, however 
restricted, of a tried and proved tyrant. 
The Long Parliament acted on the 
90 



Milton £# 



same principle, and is entitled to the 
same praise. They could not trust 
the king. He had no doubt passed 
salutary laws ; but what assurance was 
there that he would not break them ? 
He had renounced oppressive preroga- 
tives ; but where was the security that he 
would not resume them ? The nation 
had to deal with a man whom no tie 
could bind, a man who made and broke 
promises with equal facility, a man 
whose honour had been a hundred 
times pawned, and never redeemed. 

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament 
stands on still stronger ground than 
the Convention of 1688. No action 
of James can be compared to the con- 
duct of Charles with respect to the 
Petition of Right. The Lords and 
Commons present him with a bill in 
91 



iH Milton 

which the constitutional limits of his 
power are marked out. He hesitates ; 
he evades ; at last he bargains to give 
his assent for five subsidies. The bill 
receives his solemn assent ; the sub- 
sidies are voted ; but no sooner is the 
tyrant relieved, than he returns at once 
to all the arbitrary measures which he 
had bound himself to abandon, and 
violates all the clauses of the very Act 
which he had been paid to pass. 

For more than ten years the people 
had seen the rights which were theirs 
by a double claim, by immemorial 
inheritance and by recent purchase, in- 
fringed by the perfidious king who had 
recognised them. At length, circum- 
stances compelled Charles to summon 
another Parliament : another chance 
was given to our fathers : were they 
92 



Milton H£ 



to throw it away as they had thrown 
away the former ? Were they again 
to be cozened by le Rot le veut ? Were 
they again to advance their money on 
pledges which had been forfeited over 
and over again ? Were they to lay a 
second Petition of Right at the foot of 
the throne, to grant another lavish aid 
in exchange for another unmeaning 
ceremony, and then to take their de- 
parture, till, after ten years more of 
fraud and oppression, their prince 
should again require a supply, and 
again repay it with a perjury ? They 
were compelled to choose whether they 
would trust a tyrant or conquer him. 
We think that they chose wisely and 
nob)y. 

The advocates of Charles, like the 
advocates of other malefactors against 
93 



#4 Milton 

whom overwhelming evidence is pro- 
duced, generally decline all controversy 
about the facts, and content themselves 
with calling testimony to character. 
He had so many private virtues ! 
And had James the Second no pri- 
vate virtues ? Was Oliver Cromwell, 
his bitterest enemies themselves being 
judges, destitute of private virtues ? 
And what, after all, are the virtues 
ascribed to Charles ? A religious zeal, 
not more sincere than that of his son, 
and fully as weak and narrow-minded, 
and a few of the ordinary household 
decencies which half the tombstones in 
England claim for those who lie be- 
neath them. A good father ! A good 
husband ! Ample apologies indeed for 
fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, 
and falsehood ! 

94 



Milton ¥& 



We charge him with having broken 
his coronation oath ; and we are told 
that he kept his marriage vow ! We 
accuse him of having given up his 
people to the merciless inflictions of 
the most hot-headed and hard-hearted 
of prelates ; and the defence is, that 
he took his little son on his knee 
and kissed him ! We censure him 
for having violated the articles of the 
Petition of Right, after having, for good 
and valuable consideration, promised to 
observe them ; and we are informed 
that he was accustomed to hear prayers 
at six o'clock in the morning ! It is to 
such considerations as these, together 
with his Vandyke dress, his handsome 
face, and his peaked beard, that he 
owes, we verily believe, most of his 
popularity with the present generation. 
95 



#4 Milton 

For ourselves, we own that we do 
not understand the common phrase, 
a good man, but a bad king. We can 
as easily conceive a good man and an 
unnatural father, or a good man and 
a treacherous friend. We cannot, in 
estimating the character of an individ- 
ual, leave out of our consideration his 
conduct in the most important of all 
human relations ; and if in that relation 
we find him to have been selfish, cruel, 
and deceitful, we shall take the liberty 
to call him a bad man, in spite of all 
his temperance at table, and all his 
regularity at chapel. 

We cannot refrain from adding a 
few words respecting a topic on which 
the defenders of Charles are fond of 
dwelling. If, they say, he governed 
his people ill, he at least governed them 
96 



Milton £# 



after the example of his predecessors. 
If he violated their privileges, it was 
because those privileges* had not been 
accurately defined. No act of oppres- 
sion has ever been imputed to him 
which has not a parallel in the annals 
of the Tudors. This point Hume has 
laboured, with an art which is as dis- 
creditable in a historical work as it 
would be admirable in a forensic address. 
The answer is short, clear, and decisive. 
Charles had assented to the Petition of 
Right. He had renounced the oppres- 
sive powers said to have been exercised 
by his predecessors, and he had re- 
nounced them for money. He was 
not entitled to set up his antiquated 
claims against his own recent release. 
These arguments are so obvious, 
that it may seem superfluous to dwell 
97 



#g Milton 

upon them. But those who have ob- 
served how much the events of that 
time are misrepresented and misunder- 
stood will not blame us for stating the 
case simply. It is a case of which 
the simplest statement is the strongest. 
The enemies of the Parliament, in- 
deed, rarely choose to take issue on the 
great points of the question. They 
content themselves with exposing some 
of the crimes and follies to which pub- 
lic commotions necessarily give birth. 
They bewail the unmerited fate of 
Strafford. They execrate the lawless 
violence of the army. They laugh at 
the Scriptural names of the preachers. 
Major-generals fleecing their districts ; 
soldiers revelling on the spoils of a 
ruined peasantry ; upstarts, enriched by 
the public plunder, taking possession of 
98 



Milton 



^ 



the hospitable firesides and hereditary 
trees of the old gentry ; boys smashing 
the beautiful windows of cathedrals ; 
Quakers riding naked through the 
market-place ; Fifth-monarchy men 
shouting for King Jesus ; agitators 
lecturing from the tops of tubs on 
the fate of Agag; all these, they tell 
us, were the offspring of the Great 
Rebellion. 

Be it so. We are not careful to 
answer in this matter. These charges, 
were they infinitely more important, 
would not alter our opinion of an event 
which alone has made us to differ from 
the slaves who crouch beneath despotic 
sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were 
produced by the civil war. They were 
the price of our liberty. Has the ac- 
quisition been worth the sacrifice ? It 

99 
L.ofC. 



#4 Milton 

is the nature of the Devil of tyranny 
to tear and rend the body which he 
leaves. Are the miseries of con- 
tinued possession less horrible than 
the struggles of the tremendous exor- 
cism ? 

If it were possible that a people 
brought up under an intolerant and ar- 
bitrary system could subvert that sys- 
tem without acts of cruelty and folly, 
half the objections to despotic power 
would be removed. We should, in that 
case, be compelled to acknowledge that 
it at least produces no pernicious efFects 
on the intellectual and moral character 
of a nation. We deplore the outrages 
which accompany revolutions. But the 
more violent the outrages, the more as- 
sured we feel that a revolution was 
necessary. The violence of those out- 



Milton Ht 



rages will always be proportioned to the 
ferocity and ignorance of the people ; 
and the ferocity and ignorance of the 
people will be proportioned to the op- 
pression and degradation under which 
they have been accustomed to live. 
Thus it was in our civil war. The 
heads of the church and state reaped 
only that which they had sown. The 
government had prohibited free discus- 
sion : it had done its best to keep the 
people unacquainted with their duties 
and their rights. The retribution was 
just and natural. If our rulers suffered 
from popular ignorance, it was because 
they had themselves taken away the key 
of knowledge. If they were assailed 
with blind fury, it was because they had 
exacted an equally blind submission. 
It is the character of such revolu- 

IOI 






Milton 



tions that we always see the worst of 
them at first. Till men have been some 
time free, they know not how to use 
their freedom. The natives of wine 
countries are generally sober. In cli- 
mates where wine is a rarity intemper- 
ance abounds. A newly liberated people 
may be compared to a northern army 
encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. 
It is said that, when soldiers in such a 
situation first find themselves able to 
indulge without restraint in such a rare 
and expensive luxury, nothing is to be 
seen but intoxication. Soon, however, 
plenty teaches discretion ; and, after 
wine has been for a few months their 
daily fare, they become more temperate 
than they had ever been in their own 
country. In the same manner, the 
final and permanent fruits of liberty are 



Milton H£ 

wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its 
immediate effects are often atrocious 
crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on 
points the most clear, dogmatism on 
points the most mysterious. It is just 
at this crisis that its enemies love to 
exhibit it. They pull down the scaf- 
folding from the half-finished edifice : 
they point to the flying dust, the fall- 
ing bricks, the comfortless rooms, the 
frightful irregularity of the whole ap- 
pearance; and then ask in scorn where 
the promised splendour and comfort is 
to be found. If such miserable soph- 
isms were to prevail there would never 
be a good house or a good government 
in the world. 

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, 
who, by some mysterious law of her 
nature, was condemned to appear at 
103 



-SH Milton 



certain seasons in the form of a foul 
and poisonous snake. Those who in- 
jured her during the period of her dis- 
guise were for ever excluded from 
participation in the blessings which she 
bestowed. But to those who, in spite 
of her loathsome aspect, pitied and pro- 
tected her, she afterward revealed her- 
self in the beautiful and celestial form 
which was natural to her, accompanied 
their steps, granted all their wishes, 
filled their houses with wealth, made 
them happy in love and victorious in 
war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times 
she takes the form of a hateful reptile. 
She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But 
woe to those who in disgust shall ven- 
ture to crush her ! And happy are 
those who, having dared to receive her 
in her degraded and frightful shape, 
104 



shall at length be rewarded by her in 
the time of her beauty and her glory ! 

There is only one cure for the evils 
which newly acquired freedom pro- 
duces ; and that cure is freedom. When 
a prisoner first leaves his cell he can- 
not bear the light of day : he is unable 
to discriminate colours, or recognise 
faces. But the remedy is not to re- 
mand him into his dungeon, but to 
accustom him to the rays of the sun. 
The blaze of truth and liberty may at 
first dazzle and bewilder nations which 
have become half blind in the house of 
bondage. But let them gaze on, and 
they will soon be able to bear it. In a 
few years men learn to reason. The 
extreme violence of opinions subsides. 
Hostile theories correct each other. 
The scattered elements of truth cease 
105 



m Milton 

to contend, and begin to coalesce. And 
at length a system of justice and order 
is educed out of the chaos. 

Many politicians of our time are in 
the habit of laying it down as a self- 
evident proposition, that no people 
ought to be free till they are fit to use 
their freedom. The maxim is worthy 
of the fool in the old story who resolved 
not to go into the water till he had 
learnt to swim. If men are to wait 
for liberty till they become wise and 
good in slavery, they may indeed wait 
for ever. 

Therefore it is that we decidedly ap- 
prove of the conduct of Milton and 
the other wise and good men who, in 
spite of much that was ridiculous and 
hateful in the conduct of their associ- 
ates, stood firmly by the cause of Public 
1 06 



Milton Ht 

Liberty. We are not aware that the 
poet has been charged with personal 
participation in any of the blamable 
excesses of that time. The favourite 
topic of his enemies is the line of con- 
duct which he pursued with regard to 
the execution of the king. Of that 
celebrated proceeding we by no means 
approve. Still we must say, in justice 
to the many eminent persons who con- 
curred in it, and in justice more par- 
ticularly to the eminent person who 
defended it, that nothing can be more 
absurd than the imputations which, for 
the last hundred and sixty years, it has 
been the fashion to cast upon the Regi- 
cides. We have, throughout, abstained 
from appealing to first principles. We 
will not appeal to them now. We re- 
cur again to the parallel case of the 
107 



#4 Milton 

Revolution. What essential distinction 
can be drawn between the execution 
of the father and the deposition of the 
son ? What constitutional maxim is 
there which applies to the former and 
not to the latter ? The king can do 
no wrong. If so, James was as inno- 
cent as Charles could have been. The 
minister only ought to be responsi- 
ble for the acts of the sovereign. If 
so, why not impeach Jefferies and re- 
tain James ? The person of a king is 
sacred. Was the person of James con- 
sidered sacred at the Boyne ? To dis- 
charge cannon against an army in which 
a king is known to be posted is to ap- 
proach pretty near to regicide. Charles, 
too, it should always be remembered, 
was put to death by men who had been 
exasperated by the hostilities of several 
1 08 



years, and who had never been bound 
to him by any other tie than that which 
was common to them with all their fel- 
low citizens. Those who drove James 
from his throne, who seduced his army, 
who alienated his friends, who first im- 
prisoned him in his palace, and then 
turned him out of it, who broke in upon 
his very slumbers by imperious mes- 
sages, who pursued him with fire and 
sword from one part of the empire to 
another, who hanged, drew, and quar- 
tered his adherents, and attainted his 
innocent heir, were his nephew and his 
two daughters. When we reflect on 
ail these things, we are at a loss to con- 
ceive how the same persons who, on 
the fifth of November, thank God for 
wonderfully conducting his servant 
William, and for making all opposition 
109 



#t Milton 

fall before him until he became our 
king and governor, can, on the thir- 
tieth of January, contrive to be afraid 
that the blood of the Royal Martyr 
may be visited on themselves and their 
children. 

We disapprove, we repeat, of the 
execution of Charles ; not because the 
constitution exempts the king from 
responsibility, for we know that all 
such maxims, however excellent, have 
their exceptions ; nor because we feel 
any peculiar interest in his character, 
for we think that his sentence describes 
him with perfect justice as " a tyrant, 
a traitor, a murderer, and a public 
enemy ; " but because we are convinced 
that the measure was most injurious to 
the cause of freedom. He whom it 
removed was a captive and a hostage : 
no 



Milton H£ 

his heir, to whom the allegiance of 
every Royalist was instantly trans- 
ferred, was at large. The Presby- 
terians could never have been perfectly 
reconciled to the father : they had no 
such rooted enmity to- the son. The 
great body of the people, also, contem- 
plated that proceeding with feelings 
which, however unreasonable, no gov- 
ernment could safely venture to outrage. 
But though we think the conduct of 
the Regicides blamable, that of Milton 
appears to us in a very different light. 
The deed was done. It could not be 
undone. The evil was incurred ; and 
the object was to render it as small as 
possible. We censure the chiefs of the 
army for not yielding to the popular 
opinion ; but we cannot censure Milton 
for wishing to change that opinion. 



#4 Milton 

The very feeling which would have re- 
strained us from committing the act 
would have led us, after it had been 
committed, to defend it against the 
ravings of servility and superstition. 
For the sake of public liberty, we wish 
that the thing had not been done, while 
the people disapproved of it. But, for 
the sake of public liberty, we should 
also have wished the people to approve 
of it when it was done. If anything 
more were wanting to the justification 
of Milton, the book of Salmasius would 
furnish it. That miserable performance 
is now with justice considered only as a 
beacon to word-catchers, who wish to 
become statesmen. The celebrity of 
the man who refuted it, the " JEnex 
magni dextra," gives it all its fame with 
the present generation. In that age 



Milton m 

the state of things was different. It 
was not then fully understood how vast 
an interval separates the more classical 
scholar from the political philosopher. 
Nor can it be doubted that a treatise 
which, bearing the name of so eminent 
a critic, attacked the fundamental prin- 
ciples of all free governments, must, if 
suffered to remain unanswered, have 
produced a most pernicious effect on 
the public mind. 

We wish to add a few words rela- 
tive to another subject, on which the 
enemies of Milton delight to dwell, his 
conduct during the administration of 
the Protector. That an enthusiastic 
votary of liberty should accept office 
under a military usurper seems, no 
doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. 
But all the circumstances in which 
"3 



#4 Milton 

the country was then placed were 
extraordinary. The ambition of 
Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He 
never seems to have coveted despotic 
power. He at first fought sincerely 
and manfully for the Parliament, and 
never deserted it, till it had deserted its 
duty. If he dissolved it by force, it 
was not till he found that the few 
members who remained after so many 
deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were 
desirous to appropriate to themselves a 
power which they held only in trust, 
and to inflict upon England the curse 
of a Venetian oligarchy. But even 
when thus placed by violence at the 
head of affairs, he did not assume un- 
limited power. He gave the country 
a constitution far more perfect than 
any which had at that time been known 
114 



Milton Hf 

in the world. He reformed the repre- 
sentative system in a manner which 
has extorted praise even from Lord 
Clarendon. For himself he demanded 
indeed the first place in the common- 
wealth ; but with powers scarcely so 
great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, 
or an American president. He gave 
the Parliament a voice in the appoint- 
ment of ministers, and left to it the 
whole legislative authority, not even 
reserving to himself a veto on its enact- 
ments ; and he did not require that the 
chief magistracy should be hereditary 
in his family. Thus far, we think, if 
the circumstances of the time and the 
opportunities which he had of aggran- 
dising himself be fairly considered, he 
will not lose by comparison with Wash- 
ington or Bolivar. Had his moderation 
"15 



#4 Milton 

been met with corresponding modera- 
tion, there is no reason to think that he 
would have overstepped the line which 
he had traced for himself. But when 
he found that his parliaments questioned 
the authority under which they met, 
and that he was in danger of being 
deprived of the restricted power which 
was absolutely necessary to his personal 
safety, then, it must be acknowledged, 
he adopted a more arbitrary policy. 

Yet, though we believe that the in- 
tentions of Cromwell were at first 
honest, though we believe that he was 
driven from the noble course which he 
had marked out for himself by the 
almost irresistible force of circum- 
stances, though we admire, in com- 
mon with all men of all parties, the 
ability and energy of his splendid ad- 
116 



Milton 



?^r 



ministration, we are not pleading for 
arbitrary and lawless power, even in 
his hands. We know that a good 
constitution is infinitely better than 
the best despot. But we suspect, that 
at the time of which we speak the 
violence of religious and political en- 
mities rendered a stable and happy 
settlement next to impossible. The 
choice lay, not between Cromwell and 
liberty, but between Cromwell and the 
Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no 
man can doubt who fairly compares the 
events of the protectorate with those 
of the thirty years which succeeded it, 
the darkest and most disgraceful in the 
English annals. Cromwell was evi- 
dently laying, though in an irregular 
manner, the foundations of an admira- 
ble system. Never before had religious 
117 



m Milton 



liberty and the freedom of discussion 
been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never 
had the national honour been better up- 
held abroad, or the seat of justice better 
filled at home. And it was rarely that 
any opposition which stopped short of 
open rebellion provoked the resent- 
ment of the liberal and magnanimous 
usurper. The institutions which he had 
established, as set down in the Instru- 
ment of Government, and the Humble 
Petition and Advice, were excellent. 
His practice, it is true, too often de- 
parted from the theory of these institu- 
tions. But, had he lived a few years 
longer, it is probable that his institutions 
would have survived him, and that his 
arbitrary practice would have died with 
him. His power had not been conse- 
crated by ancient prejudices. It was 
118 



?tT 



upheld only by his great personal quali- 
ties. Little, therefore, was to be 
dreaded from a second protector, un- 
less he was also a second Oliver Crom- 
well. The events which followed his 
decease are the most complete vindica- 
tion of those who exerted themselves 
to uphold his authority. His death 
dissolved the whole frame of society. 
The army rose against the Parliament, 
the different corps of the army against 
each other. Sect raved against sect. 
Party plotted against party. The Pres- 
byterians, in their eagerness to be re- 
venged on the Independents, sacrificed 
their own liberty, and deserted all their 
old principles. Without casting one 
glance on the past, or requiring one 
stipulation for the future, they threw 
down their freedom at the feet of 
119 



#* Milton 

the most frivolous and heartless of 
tyrants. 

Then came those days, never to be 
recalled without a blush, the days of 
servitude without loyalty and sensual- 
ity without love, of dwarfish talents 
and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold 
hearts and narrow minds, the golden 
age of the coward, the bigot, and the 
slave. The king cringed to his rival 
that he might trample on his people, 
sank into a viceroy of France, and 
pocketed, with complacent infamy, her 
degrading insults, and her more degrad- 
ing gold. The caresses of harlots, and 
the jests of buffoons, regulated the 
policy of the state. The government 
had just ability enough to deceive, and 
just religion enough to persecute. The 
principles of liberty were the scoff of 

120 



Milton H£ 



every grinning courtier, and the Anath- 
ema Maranatha of every fawning 
dean. In every high place, worship 
was paid to Charles and James, Belial 
and Moloch ; and England propitiated 
those obscene and cruel idols with the 
blood of her best and bravest children. 
Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace 
to disgrace, till the race accursed of 
God and man was a second time driven 
forth, to wander on the face of the 
earth, and to be a byword and a shak- 
ing of the head to the nations. 

Most of the remarks which we have 
hitherto made on the public character 
of Milton apply to him only as one of 
a large body. We shall proceed to 
notice some of the peculiarities which 
distinguished him from his contempo- 
raries. And, for that purpose, it is 



#3 Milton 

necessary to take a short survey of the 
parties into which the political world 
was at that time divided. We must 
premise, that our observations are in- 
tended to apply only to those who 
adhered, from a sincere preference, 
to one or to the other side. In days 
of public commotion, every faction, 
like an Oriental army, is attended by 
a crowd of camp-followers, an useless 
and heartless rabble, who prowl around 
its line of march in the hope of picking 
up something under its protection, but 
desert it in the day of battle, and often 
join to exterminate it after a defeat. 
England, at the time of which we are 
treating, abounded with fickle and sel- 
fish politicians, who transferred their 
support to every government as it rose, 
who kissed the hand of the king in 



Milton g& 

1640, and spat in his face in 1649, 
who shouted with equal glee when 
Cromwell was inaugurated in West- 
minster Hall, and when he was dug 
up to be hanged at Tyburn, who dined 
on calves' heads, or stuck up oak- 
branches, as circumstances altered, 
without the slightest shame or repug- 
nance. These we leave out of the 
account. We take our estimate of 
parties from those who really deserved 
to be called partisans. 

We would speak first of the Puritans, 
the most remarkable body of men, per- 
haps, which the world has ever pro- 
duced. The odious and ridiculous 
parts of their character lie on the sur- 
face. He that runs may read them ; 
nor have there been wanting attentive 
and malicious observers to point them 
123 



#4 Milton 

out. For many years after the Restor- 
ation, they were the theme of unmeas- 
ured invective and derision. They 
were exposed to the utmost licentious- 
ness of the press and of the stage, at 
the time when the press and the stage 
were most licentious. They were not 
men of letters ; they were as a body, 
unpopular ; they could not defend them- 
selves ; and the public would not take 
them under its protection. They were 
therefore abandoned, without reserve, 
to the tender mercies of the satirists 
and dramatists. The ostentatious sim- 
plicity of their dress, their sour as- 
pect, their nasal twang, their stiff 
posture, their long graces, their He- 
brew names, the Scriptural phrases 
which they introduced on every occa- 
sion, their contempt of human learning, 
124 



Milton 



KjJL 



their detestation of polite amusements, 
were indeed fair game for the laughers. 
But it is not from the laughers alone 
that the philosophy of history is to be 
learnt. And he who approaches this 
subject should carefully guard against 
the influence of that potent ridicule 
which has already misled so many 
excellent writers. 

" Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." 

Those who roused the people to 
resistance, who directed their measures 
through a long series of eventful years, 
who formed, out of the most unprom- 
ising materials, the finest army that 
Europe had ever seen, who trampled 
I2 5 



^ Milton 

down King, Church, and Aristocracy, 
who, in the short intervals of domestic 
sedition and rebellion, made the name 
of England terrible to every nation on 
the face of the earth, were no vulgar 
fanatics. Most of their absurdities 
were mere external badges, like the 
signs of freemasonry, or the dresses 
of friars. We regret that these badges 
were not more attractive. We regret 
that a body to whose courage and talents 
mankind has owed inestimable obliga- 
tions had not the lofty elegance which 
distinguished some of the adherents 
of Charles the First, or the easy good- 
breeding for which the court of Charles 
the Second was celebrated. But, if we 
must make our choice, we shall, like 
Bassanio in the play, turn from the 
specious caskets which contain only 
126 






Milton H£ 



the Death's head and the Fool's head, 
and fix on the plain leaden chest 
which conceals the treasure. 

The Puritans were men whose minds 
had derived a peculiar character from 
the daily contemplation of superior 
beings and eternal interests. Not con- 
tent with acknowledging, in general 
terms, an overruling Providence, they 
habitually ascribed every event to the 
will of the Great Being, for whose 
power nothing was too vast, for whose 
inspection nothing was too minute. 
To know him, to serve him, to enjoy 
him, was with them the great end of 
existence. They rejected with con- 
tempt the ceremonious homage which 
other sects substituted for the pure 
worship of the soul. Instead of catch- 
ing occasional glimpses of the Deity 
127 



•*H Milton 

through an obscuring veil, they aspired 
to gaze full on his intolerable bright- 
ness, and to commune with him face 
to face. Hence originated their con- 
tempt for terrestrial distinctions. The 
difference between the greatest and the 
meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, 
when compared with the boundless 
interval which separated the whole 
race from him on whom their own eyes 
were constantly fixed. They recog- 
nised no title to superiority but his 
favour ; and, confident of that favour, 
they despised all the accomplishments 
and all the dignities of the world. If 
they were unacquainted with the works 
of philosophers and poets, they were 
deeply read in the oracles of God. If 
their names were not found in the 
registers of heralds, they were recorded 
128 



Milton £# 



in the Book of Life. If their steps 
were not accompanied by a splendid 
train of menials, legions of ministering 
angels had charge over them. Their 
palaces were houses not made with 
hands ; their diadems crowns of glory 
which should never fade away. On 
the rich and the eloquent, on nobles 
and priests they looked down with 
contempt : for they esteemed themselves 
rich in a more precious treasure, and 
eloquent in a more sublime language, 
nobles by the right of an earlier crea- 
tion, and priests by the imposition of 
a mightier hand. The very meanest 
of them was a being to whose fate 
a mysterious and terrible importance 
belonged, on whose slightest action the 
spirits of light and darkness looked 
with anxious interest, who had been 
129 



3H Milton 



n~> 



destined, before heaven and earth were 
created, to enjoy a felicity which should 
continue when heaven and earth should 
have passed away. Events which 
short-sighted politicians ascribed to 
earthly causes, had been ordained on 
his account. For his sake empires 
had risen, and flourished, and decayed. 
For his sake the Almighty had pro- 
claimed his will by the pen of the 
Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. 
He had been wrested by no common 
deliverer from the grasp of no common 
foe. He had been ransomed by the 
sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood 
of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him 
that the sun had been darkened, that 
the rocks had been rent, that the dead 
had risen, that all nature had shuddered 
at the sufferings of her expiring God. 
130 



Milton £# 



Thus the Puritan was made up of 
two different men, the one all self- 
abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, 
the other proud, calm, inflexible, saga- 
cious. He prostrated himself in the 
dust before his Maker ; but he set his 
foot on the neck of his king. In his 
devotional retirement, he prayed with 
convulsions, and groans, and tears. 
He was half-maddened by glorious or 
terrible illusions. He heard the lyres 
of angels or the tempting whispers of 
fiends. He caught a gleam of the 
Beatific Vision, or woke screaming 
from dreams of everlasting fire. Like 
Vane, he thought himself intrusted 
with the sceptre of the millennial year. 
Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitter- 
ness of his soul that God had hid his 
face from him. But when he took 



#4 Milton 



his seat in the council, or girt on his 
sword for war, these tempestuous work- 
ings of the soul had left no perceptible 
trace behind them. People who saw 
nothing of the godly but their uncouth 
visages, and heard nothing from them 
but their groans and their whining 
hymns, might laugh at them. But 
those had little reason to laugh who 
encountered them in the hall of debate 
or in the field of battle. These fanatics 
brought to civil and military affairs a 
coolness of judgment and an immuta- 
bility of purpose which some writers 
have thought inconsistent with their 
religious zeal, but which were in fact 
the necessary effects of it. The inten- 
sity of their feelings on one subject 
made them tranquil on every other. 
One overpowering sentiment had sub- 
132 



jected to itself pity and hatred, ambition 
and fear. Death had lost its terrors 
and pleasure its charms. They had 
their smiles and their tears, their rap- 
tures and their sorrows, but not for 
the things of this world. Enthusiasm 
had made them Stoics, had cleared their 
minds from every vulgar passion and 
prejudice, and raised them above the 
influence of danger and of corruption. 
It sometimes might lead them to pursue 
unwise ends, but never to choose 
unwise means. They went through 
the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man 
Talus with his flail, crushing and tram- 
pling down oppressors, mingling with 
human beings, but having neither part 
or lot in human infirmities, insensi- 
ble to fatigue, to pleasure, and to 
pain, not to be pierced by any 
*33 






Milton 



weapon, not to be withstood by any 
barrier. 

Such we believe to have been the 
character of the Puritans. We perceive 
the absurdity of their manners. We 
dislike the sullen gloom of their do- 
mestic habits. We acknowledge that 
the tone of their minds was often 
injured by straining after things too 
high for mortal reach : and we know 
that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, 
they too often fell into the worst vices 
of that bad system, intolerance and 
extravagant austerity, that they had 
their anchorites and their crusades, 
their Dunstans and their De Mon- 
forts, their Dominies and their Es- 
cobars. Yet, when all circumstances 
are taken into consideration, we do 
not hesitate to pronounce them a 
*34 



Milton £# 



brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful 
body. 

The Puritans espoused the cause of 
civil liberty mainly because it was the 
cause of religion. There was another 
party, by no means numerous, but 
distinguished by learning and ability, 
which acted with them on very different 
principles. We speak of those whom 
Cromwell was accustomed to call the 
Heathens, men who were, in the 
phraseology of that time, doubting 
Thomases or careless Gallios with 
regard to religious subjects, but passion- 
ate worshippers of freedom. Heated 
by the study of ancient literature, they 
set up their country as their idol, and 
proposed to themselves the heroes of 
Plutarch as their examples. They 
seem to have borne some resemblance 
i35 



#4 Milton 

to the Brissotines of the French Revolu- 
tion. But it is not very easy to draw 
the line of distinction between them 
and their devout associates, whose 
tone and manner they sometimes 
found it convenient to affect, and 
sometimes, it is probable, impercepti- 
bly adopted. 

We now come to the Royalists. 
We shall attempt to speak of them, 
as we have spoken of their antagonists, 
with perfect candour. We shall not 
charge upon a whole party the profli- 
gacy and baseness of the horse-boys, 
gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope 
of license and plunder attracted from 
all the dens of Whitefriars to the 
standard of Charles, and who disgraced 
their associates by excesses which, 
under the stricter discipline of the 
136 



Milton H£ 



Parliamentary armies, were never tol- 
erated. We will select a more favour- 
able specimen. Thinking as we do 
that the cause of the king was the 
cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet 
cannot refrain from looking with com- 
placency on the character of the hon- 
est old cavaliers. We feel a national 
pride in comparing them with the 
instruments which the despots of other 
countries are compelled to employ, 
with the mutes who throng their ante- 
chambers, and the Janissaries who 
mount guard at their gates. Our roy- 
alist countrymen were not heartless, 
dangling courtiers, bowing at every 
step, and simpering at every word. 
They were not mere machines for 
destruction, dressed up in uniforms, 
caned into skill, intoxicated into valour, 
i37 



-*H Milton 

defending without love, destroying with- 
out hatred. There was a freedom in 
there subserviency, a nobleness in their 
very degradation. The sentiment of 
individual independence was strong 
within them. They were indeed mis- 
led, but by no base or selfish motive. 
Compassion and romantic honour, the 
prejudices of childhood, and the vener- 
able names of history, threw over them 
a spell potent as that of Duessa ; and, 
like the Red-Cross Knight, they 
thought that they were doing battle for 
an injured beauty, while they defended 
a false and loathsome sorceress. In 
truth they scarcely entered at all into 
the merits of the political question. It 
was not for a treacherous king or an 
intolerant church that they fought, but 
for the old banner which had waved 
138 



Milton 



t=vT 



in so many battles over the heads of 
their fathers, and for the altars at which 
they had received the hands of their 
brides. Though nothing could be 
more erroneous than their political 
opinions, they possessed, in far greater 
degree than their adversaries, those 
qualities which are the grace of private 
life. With many of the vices of the 
Round Table, they had also many of 
its virtues, courtesy, generosity, verac- 
ity, tenderness, and respect for women. 
They had far more both of profound 
and of polite learning than the Puritans. 
Their manners were more engaging, 
their tempers more amiable, their tastes 
more elegant, and their households 
more cheerful. 

Milton did not strictly belong to 
any of the classes which we have 
i39 



•SH Milton 

described. He was not a Puritan. 
He was not a freethinker. He was 
not a Royalist. In his character the 
noblest qualities of every party were 
combined in harmonious union. From 
the Parliament and from the Court, 
from the conventicle and from the 
Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and 
sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, 
and from the Christmas revel of the 
hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected 
and drew to itself whatever was great 
and good, while it rejected all the base 
and pernicious ingredients by which 
those finer elements were defiled. 
Like the Puritans, he lived 

" As ever in his great taskmaster's eye." 

Like them, he kept his mind con- 
tinually fixed on an Almighty Judge 
140 



Milton £# 



and an eternal reward. And hence he 
acquired their contempt of external 
circumstances, their fortitude, their 
tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. 
But not the coolest sceptic or the 
most profane scoffer was more per- 
fectly free from the contagion of their 
frantic delusions, their savage manners, 
their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of 
science, and their aversion to pleasure. 
Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, 
he had nevertheless all the estimable 
and ornamental qualities which were 
almost entirely monopolised by the 
party of the tyrant. There was none 
who had a stronger sense of the value 
of literature, a finer relish for every 
elegant amusement, or a more chiv- 
alrous delicacy of honour and love. 
Though his opinions were democratic, 
141 



## Milton 



his tastes and his associations were such 
as harmonise best with monarchy and 
aristocracy. He was under the influ- 
ence of all the feelings by which the 
gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of 
those feelings he was the master and 
not the slave. Like the hero of 
Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures 
of fascination ; but he was not fasci- 
nated. He listened to the song of the 
Syrens ; yet he glided by without being 
seduced to their fatal shore. He 
tasted the cup of Circe ; but he bore 
about him a sure antidote against the 
effects of its bewitching sweetness. 
The allusions which captivated his 
imagination never impaired his rea- 
soning powers. The statesman was 
proof against the splendour, the sol- 
emnity, and the romance which en- 
142 



Milton §# 

chanted the poet. Any person who 
will contrast the sentiments expressed 
in his treatises on Prelacy with the ex- 
quisite lines on ecclesiastical architec- 
ture and music in the Penseroso, which 
was published about the same time, 
will understand our meaning. This is 
an inconsistency which, more than 
anything else, raises his character in 
our estimation, because it shows how 
many private tastes and feelings he 
sacrificed, in order to do what he con- 
sidered his duty to mankind. It is 
the very struggle of the noble 
Othello. His heart relents ; but his 
hand is firm. He does nought in 
hate, but all in honour. He kisses 
the beautiful deceiver before he des- 
troys her. 

That from which the public char- 
H3 



m Milton 

acter of Milton derives its great and 
peculiar splendour still remains to be 
mentioned. If he exerted himself to 
overthrow a forsworn king and a per- 
secuting hierarchy, he exerted himself 
in conjunction with others. But the 
glory of the battle which he fought 
for the species of freedom which is the 
most valuable, and which was then 
the least understood, the freedom of 
the human mind, is all his own. 
Thousands and tens of thousands 
among his contemporaries raised their 
voices against Ship-money and the 
Star-chamber. But there were few 
indeed who discerned the more fearful 
evils of moral and intellectual slavery, 
and the benefits which would result 
from the liberty of the press and the 
unfettered exercise of private judg- 
144 



Milton H£ 

ment. These were the objects which 
Milton justly conceived to be the most 
important. He was desirous that the 
people should think for themselves as 
well as tax themselves, and should 
be emancipated from the dominion 
of prejudice as well as from that of 
Charles. He knew that those who, 
with the best intentions, overlooked 
these schemes of reform, and con- 
tented themselves with pulling down 
the king and imprisoning the malig- 
nants, acted like the heedless broth- 
ers in his own poem, who, in their 
eagerness to disperse the train of 
the sorcerer, neglected the means 
of liberating the captive. They 
thought only of conquering when 
they should have thought of disen- 
chanting. 

US 



#g Milton 

M Oh, he mistook ! Ye should have snatched 

his wand 
And bound him fast. Without the rod 

reversed, 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the lady that sits here 
Bound in strong fetters fixed and motion- 
less." 



To reverse the rod, to spell the 
charm backward, to break the ties 
which bound a stupefied people to the 
seat of enchantment, was the noble 
aim of Milton. To this all his public 
conduct was directed. For this he 
joined the Presbyterians ; for this he 
forsook them. He fought their peril- 
ous battle ; but he turned away with 
disdain from their insolent triumph. 
He saw that they, like those whom 
they had vanquished, were hostile to 
146 



Milton Hr 

the liberty of thought. He therefore 
joined the Independents, and called 
upon Cromwell to break the secular 
chain, and to save free conscience 
from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. 
With a view to the same great object, 
he attacked the licensing system in 
that sublime treatise which every 
statesman should wear as a sign upon 
his hand and as frontlets between his 
eyes. His attacks were, in general, 
directed less against particular abuses 
than against those deeply seated errors 
on which almost all abuses are founded, 
the servile worship of eminent men 
and the irrational dread of innovation. 
That he might shake the founda- 
tions of these debasing sentiments more 
effectually, he always selected for him- 
self the boldest literary services. He 
i47 



#t Milton 

never came up in the rear when the 
outworks had been carried and the 
breach entered. He pressed into the 
forlorn hope. At the beginning of 
the changes, he wrote within compa- 
rable energy and eloquence against the 
bishops. But, when his opinion 
seemed likely to prevail, he passed on 
to other subjects, and abandoned prel- 
acy to the crowd of writers who now 
hastened to insult a falling party. 
There is no more hazardous enterprise 
than that of bearing the torch of truth 
into those dark and infected recesses 
in which no light has ever shone. 
But it was the choice and the pleasure 
of Milton to penetrate the noisome 
vapours, and to brave the terrible explo- 
sion. Those who most disapprove of 
his opinions must respect the hardi- 
148 



Milton m 

hood with which he maintained them. 
He, in general, left to others the credit 
of expounding and defending the pop- 
ular parts of his religious and political 
creed. He took his own stand upon 
those which the great body of his 
countrymen reprobated as criminal, or 
derided as paradoxical. He stood up 
for divorce and regicide. He attacked 
the prevailing systems of education. 
His radiant and beneficent career re- 
sembled that of the god of light and 
fertility. 

" Nitor in adversum ; nee me, qui caetera, 

vincit 
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi." 

It is to be regretted that the prose 
writings of Milton should, in our time, 
be so little read. As compositions, 
149 



#1 Milton 

they deserve the attention of every 
man who wishes to become acquainted 
with the full power of the English 
language. They abound with pas- 
sages compared with which the finest 
declamations of Burke sink into insig- 
nificance. They are a perfect field of 
cloth of gold. The style is stiff with 
gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the 
earlier books of the Paradise Lost 
has the great poet ever risen higher 
than in those parts of his controversial 
works in which his feelings, excited by 
conflict, find a vent in bursts of devo- 
tional and lyric rapture. It is, to bor- 
row his own majestic language, " a 
seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and 
harping symphonies." 

We had intended to look more 
closely at these performances, to ana- 
150 



Milton 



t=v? 



lyse the peculiarities of the diction, to 
dwell at some length on the sublime 
wisdom of the Areopagitica and the 
nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and 
to point out some of those magnificent 
passages which occur in the Treatise 
of Reformation and the Animadver- 
sions on the Remonstrant. But the 
length to which our remarks have al- 
ready extended renders this impossible. 
We must conclude. And yet we 
can scarcely tear ourselves away from 
the subject. The days immediately 
following the publication of this relic 
of Milton appear to be peculiarly set 
apart, and consecrated to his memory. 
And we shall scarcely be censured if, 
on this his festival, we be found linger- 
ing near his shrine, how worthless 
soever may be the offering which we 
*5* 



-*k Milton 



bring to it. While this book lies on 
our table, we seem to be contempo- 
raries of the writer. We are trans- 
ported a hundred and fifty years back. 
We can almost fancy that we are visit- 
ing him in his small lodging ; that we 
see him sitting at the old organ be- 
neath the faded green hangings ; that 
we can catch the quick twinkle of his 
eyes, rolling in vain to find the day ; 
that we are reading in the lines of his 
noble countenance the proud and 
mournful history of his glory and his 
affliction. We image to ourselves the 
breathless silence in which we should 
listen to his slightest word, the passion- 
ate veneration with which we should 
kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon 
it, the earnestness with which we should 
endeavour to console him, if indeed such 
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Milton H£ 



a spirit could need consolation, for the 
neglect of an age unworthy of his tal- 
ents and his virtues, the eagerness with 
which we should contest with his 
daughters, or with his Quaker friend 
Elwood, the privilege of reading Ho- 
mer to him, or of taking down the 
immortal accents which flowed from 
his lips. 

These are perhaps foolish feelings. 
Yet we cannot be ashamed of them ; 
nor shall we be sorry if what we have 
written shall in any degree excite them 
in other minds. We are not much in 
the habit of idolising either the living 
or the dead. And we think that there 
is no more certain indication of a weak 
and ill-regulated intellect than that 
propensity which, for want of a better 
name, we will venture to christen Bos- 
J 53 



#* Milton 

wellism. But there are a few charac- 
ters which have stood the closest 
scrutiny and the severest tests, which 
have been tried in the furnace and have 
proved pure, which have been weighed 
in the balance and have not been found 
wanting, which have been declared ster- 
ling by the general consent of mankind, 
and which are visibly stamped with the 
image and superscription of the Most 
High. These great men we trust that 
we know how to prize ; and of these 
was Milton. The sight of his books, 
the sound of his name, are pleasant to 
us. His thoughts resemble those ce- 
lestial fruits and flowers which the 
Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down 
from the gardens of Paradise to the 
earth, and which were distinguished 
from the productions of other soils, 
iS4 



Milton H£ 

not only by superior bloom and sweet- 
ness, but by miraculous efficacy to 
invigorate and to heal. They are 
powerful, not only to delight, but to 
elevate and purify. Nor do we envy 
the man who can study either the life 
or the writings of the great poet and 
patriot, without aspiring to emulate, 
not indeed the sublime works with 
which his genius has enriched our lit- 
erature, but the zeal with which he 
laboured for the public good, the forti- 
tude with which he endured every 
private calamity, the lofty disdain with 
which he looked down on temptations 
and dangers, the deadly hatred which 
he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the 
faith which he so sternly kept with his 
country and with his fame. 

THE END. 

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